Professor, thanks for the great presentation last
night. I kept thinking about what you said regarding your
disagreement with the movies’ editorial suggestion at the end that what North
Korea needs is “information.” You said that you disagreed and thought
what they needed was “knowledge” in the context of what happened in the recent
elections in the U.S. with all the “information” we have, hyperreality,
etc.
I suppose it comes down to how you define information and
knowledge. What occurred to me is a study I remember hearing about
where they dropped off a computer without any instruction manual in a village
in India and came back to find the children on their own had figured out how to
use it. When I returned home, I remembered it was a from a TED talk
referenced here and as usual I had some of my facts wrong lol:
I guess what I’m getting at is that I’m more optimistic
about the human as a noble savage that left on their own, devoid of social
conditioning to be creative if they are given “information”—be in it the form
of a computer or access to ideas from the outside world. I agree with the
movie director’s premise that what is lacking in North Korea is “information”
because they are shut off from the outside world without any external sources
on information. It would be interesting to see if we dropped off by
parachute a bunch of computers with satellite internet connections to the N.
Korean countryside and came back ten years later to find out what
happened. North Korea would probably turn into South Korea.
Or if not, then it would be a testament to the strength of the ideas that
support their society in the face of competing ideas. Or there may
be a lot of dead people. I guess that I am one of those people who
champions the flow of information because ultimately, despite the hiccups along
the way—and trump is one big hiccup, the flow of information perpetuates growth
evolution etc. The biggest problem I see with information flow in
this country now is the platform its spreading on---and facebook and twitter
and bright people like you need to guide us on that way to a better platformJ
I also believe that probably what we consider knowledge is a
bunch of propaganda at some level anyway. Did you hear about the podcast
debate between that Canadian Professor Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris the neuroscientist
on the issue of facts, knowledge etc? They could not even agree if there
were facts etc.
In a way, though this idea is half formed at best, I see
North Korea as the embodiment of a society based on knowledge without any
information gone horribly wrong. North Korean’s have knowledge,
plenty of it, but its like they have stayed in Plato’s cave without getting any
fresh air. They are able to stay in their idealized cave because Chinese
capitalism (and from the movie it sounds like S. Korea and Japan also have a
hand it in) props up their artificial world of Marxist ideas turned into a
nightmare. I doubt their ideas and knowledge could survive in the real
world but for the artificial support system that props them up. And that
means something, doesn’t it: what good are ideas if they can’t actually
take root and survive in the real world?
And I guess that’s why I’m not really fired up about Plato,
Hegel, Marx, Gramsci et al like I used to be when I was in grad school and
working as a community organizer. I started being influenced more
by stuff like Max Weber and notions that the British (and hence American)
models of government are best because of the checks and balances in place
and because they are not as overtly ideologically based. They
just keep the information flowing and hopefully all turns out well in the
end. What do you think? Should I return to reading the young
Marx and start organizing? Lol. Maybe I will create an artificial
distinction between information philosophers (Aristotle, weber etc) and
knowledge philosophers (plato, Hegel Marx) and side with the former…lol
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